Steve T
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Summer Wednesday club meetsThe last pool session for this winter will be 1 April. This gives you three more weeks to nail those new strokes or rolls while still in nice warm water. 8 April is the week before Easter, and since there may not be many out it won’t be an official club night, although there will probably be something happening at Burrs on a peer-group basis so check the forum. The first official club Wednesday evening meet will be 15 April at Burrs.
The recent popularity of the club is really good to see but means we need to put a little bit more organisation into how this summer’s outdoor Wednesday evening sessions will be run. We have come up with the following ideas which we will run with to see how they work:
CLUB NEWCOMERS
Last year we seemed to have one or two beginners most weeks on a random basis. This is of course the future of the club and great to see, but for the coaches, this means that we are looking after them and can’t really concentrate on anyone else, nor can we do much of what we want to do. This year any newcomers (at novice level) who want to come along to the club will be asked to come to Burrs on the first Wednesday of each month, when we will use the canal and flatter parts of the river for introductory sessions. Once they’ve had some instruction we and they will then be able to decide whether they can join in on regular club sessions or perhaps need another introductory session or two. This will free up the other Wednesdays for us to help the improvers and to make fools of ourselves trying to playboat.
This will have a knock-on effect on other club members, depending on how many beginners turn up and how many coaches are available on the night. Those who are happy enough to use the rest of the river as a small group will obviously clear off and do that. Those who still want some assistance from coaches will still need to hang around with us but be aware that we’ll be concentrating on the newcomers and won’t be able to spend much time with you on your moving water skills. It all depends on numbers and, of course, river levels. We will as always make it up as we go along (situation dependant dynamic planning). The first of these will be 6 May.
RIVER TOURS
We will continue to run at least one monthly weekend club trip and this will usually be on some form of white water as that is still what the majority of people want to do. However, it’s not for everybody, and many people, particularly those who paddle as a family, will want to do something more tranquil – the popularity of Sunday’s Mersey trip, despite the weather, showed that.
There may be the occasional flat water weekend trip, but it’s been suggested that we run one flat water river trip each month on an evening. Therefore, once the evening light permits, it might be that the third Wednesday of each month will be a proper trip on something like the Bollin, Ribble, Mersey or Dee. This will take some degree of snappiness in sorting ourselves out and running shuttles etc., but it will be a great way of getting all levels and ages of paddler out, paddling as a club.
This leaves the remaining Wednesdays for our normal club sessions, messing about and working on general river skills, either at Burrs or one of our other favourites such as Chester or Crosby. The forum will continue to be the main point for organising club activities (Wednesdays and weekends) so keep an eye on it even if you don’t post here (but don’t be shy, you might as well say hello!).
Any comments on the above, or other suggestions from club members are of course welcome.
Steve
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